Delivering great Healthcare becomes a reality when the whole team knows what is going on with the patient.  How are some Hospitals connecting all of the various practitioners, caregivers and medical services throughout the patient’s entire course of medical treatment?  Many are turning to Cloud Services to ensure information flows seamlessly and all aspects of the Hospital stay are connected optimally to enable quick, accurate and safe medical care.

BLK Super Specialty Hospitals in New Delhi, India is one such business, now taking advantage of a streamlined solution that offers employee emails and a global address book to connect Hospital staff with each other.  BLK Super Specialty Hospitals decided to go with Microsoft’s Office 365 for its 1,000 employees after exploring various solutions such as Google apps, Zimbra cloud and others, and determining that the solution would meet their security, privacy and compliance requirements.

“As we manage health records of individual patients in the hospital, security and privacy was critical for us. We examined Microsoft’s technology and controls closely and found that the data centers are independently audited and certified.” – Prashant Singh, Head IT, BLK Super Speciality Hospital

For many of our customers, certifications and 3rd party audits provide additional assurances that our products and services can be trusted.  Microsoft has over 30 years of experience working with enterprises to build on-premises workplace environments that comply with standards and regulations – knowledge that transfers to cloud services and the “modern compliance environment” today.  Microsoft’s commitment to existing compliance standards such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), map to the local needs of different markets, bringing immediate value to our customers.

With Office 365, the nursing staff can access their web mail from different stations, giving them the latest patient care orders running the gamut from doctor’s instructions on medication dosages, current lab results, vital sign history, and nutritional instructions.  Office 365 frees the staff up to focus on patient care rather than focusing on security, privacy and compliance.

According to Prashant Singh, Head of IT, “Microsoft’s cloud is more secure than an on premise data center.  We are assured of email security and availability which otherwise would have been a costly affair.  We are sure that our patient medical information is completely confidential.” 

All of these benefits – better security and privacy protections – translate into time and money savings. Savings that organizations such as BLK Super Specialty Hospital can reinvest in the areas most important to their business.

Like many other hospitals, with the onset of electronic healthcare records, and increased access to private information through devices and services, BLK Super Specialty Hospital needed to quickly adapt to the growing pressures of providing timely information to its staff while keeping patient information secure and private, while conforming to local compliance regulations.

BLK Hospital sees 80 patients each day and their doctors and nurses require regular information on each patient to ensure delivery of quick, accurate and safe medical care. About 70 percent of their employees who need email access are the healthcare staff. Nurses are always on the move and often assigned to different floors, critical care units or operating rooms.

As doctors and nurses are the backbone of their patient care delivery system, it was important for them to provide access to necessary information to improve the efficiency and patient care. The hospital has taken extensive measures focused on patient safety and quality of care.

You can read more about how Microsoft’s cloud solutions were able to meet BLK Hospital’s needs in this case study.

To learn more about Microsoft’s commitment to security and data privacy in the cloud for Office 365, I encourage you to visit the Office 365 Trust Center.

About the Author

Adrienne Hall

General Manager, Trustworthy Computing

Adrienne Hall is a General Manager in the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing group, where she leads a team of information technology (IT) professionals who are focused on the security, privacy, reliability, and accessibility of devices and services built on Microsoft technology. Read more »